Physical environment modeling can be useful in the various engineering efforts involved in developing or testing of a particular product. Behavioral models exist for modeling different physical environments. Behavioral models help to analyze a system's response to different variables, such as external forces. Consider, for example, a complex system such as a car. A car includes many different components some of which may be electrical, such as tire pressure sensors, and others that may be mechanical, such as a set of tires.
A simulation environment can be selected based upon the types of components used within a system (e.g., electrical or mechanical). Some simulation environments contain behavioral models that are tailored to characterizing physical systems with mechanical components, such as an object-oriented modeling language based model. For example, an object-oriented modeling language based model can help with analyzing how a car's tires react to traveling on a bumpy road. The model can consider various physical forces, among other behavior, associated with the bumpy road and impacts to the overall car.
Other simulation environments have behavioral models that are more tailored to electrical components. A hardware description language based model, for example, can be useful for modeling electrical components where analog and digital signal behaviors are of interest. These electrical signals of interest in a car, for example, can result from the tire pressure sensor detecting a change in tire pressure while traveling on the bumpy road.
There may also be instances where the use of two different behavioral models in a single environment is desired. For example, it is undesirable for tire pressure alarms to go off after the car hits a bump in the road. During initial design or troubleshooting, analysts may want a single simulation environment that allows for characterization of both physical force modeling of the tire as well as electrical signal modeling of the pressure sensor. As noted above, the physical system impacts may be best modeled with an object-oriented modeling language based model, and the electrical system impacts may be best modeled with a hardware description language based model. Using different behavioral models together in a single environment, however, can present compatibility issues due to different programming interfaces.